FLASH BACK: How Education Reform Ate the Democratic Party | Jennifer C. Berkshire

How Education Reform Ate the Democratic Party | Jennifer C. Berkshire

FLASH BACK: How Education Reform Ate the Democratic Party

The Democrats and DeVos have more in common than they’d care to admit

IN A FACEBOOK POST THIS SUMMER, hedge fund billionaire Daniel Loeb took aim at the highest ranking Black woman in the New York legislator, Andrea Stewart-Cousins. “[H]ypocrites like Stewart-Cousins who pay fealty to powerful union thugs and bosses,” wrote Loeb, “do more damage to people of color than anyone who has ever donned a hood.” The rant, which had the exquisite misfortune of appearing just days before the actual KKK took to the streets of Charlottesville to menace nonwhite people and their allies, struck a familiar Loeb theme. In a previous post he implored his peer to take up the fight against the teachers union: “the biggest single force standing in the way of quality education and an organization that has done more to perpetuate poverty and discrimination against people of color than the KKK.”

It would be easy to dismiss all this frothing as just Loeb being Loeb. This is, after all, the same crusader for justice who once lambasted a CEO for his imperial lifestyle, not an easy charge to level from a ten-thousand-square-foot penthouse. But the NYC financier is not just any hedge fund billionaire. As the chair of the board of Success Academy, New York’s largest network of charter schools, he is a leading force within the nexus of big money and self-proclaimed school “reformers” within the Democratic party. While Loeb doesn’t limit his donations to Dems (as his profile on the married-but-looking dating site, Ashley Madison, indicated, he is not one to be tied down), he exerts the kind of outsized influence that $3.2 billion in net worth reliably commands these days.

There’s another reason why we can’t dismiss Loeb’s view that teachers unions promote income inequality and serve as a barrier to progress of any sort as just another crackpot rich-bro outburst. That’s because it’s now a key policy plank of responsible elite opinion almost everywhere. Flip back to The Economist—the bible of savvy, entrepreneurial-minded social criticism—circa 2012, and you’ll find Loeb’s screed rendered in assured magazine prose, minus the overt racist incitements. To wit: “no Wall Street financier has done as much damage to American social mobility as the teachers’ unions have.”

And where The Economist goes, influential “thought leaders” are sure to follow. So now, as America ponders the mounting economic disequilibriums that gave rise to the CONTINUE READING: How Education Reform Ate the Democratic Party | Jennifer C. Berkshire

How To Assure Representation In A Public-Private Partnership? – redqueeninla

How To Assure Representation In A Public-Private Partnership? – redqueeninla

How To Assure Representation In A Public-Private Partnership?

In California’s primary on March, 2020 Angelenos voted for delegates to our County “Central” political “Committee”. Democrats selected from among a total field of 309 candidates, for seven individuals per assembly district whose role would be to represent us, the electorate. We have a reasonable expectation to be represented faithfully by these representatives, selected politically via a democratic, electoral process.

In fact, however, political parties are only quasi-governmental. They “play one on TV” but are in fact owned and operated as a private club. The political party utilized for endorsing and ultimately selecting our public, government officials, is itself not mandated by sunshine laws or public sector requirements, but by its own private bylaws. The expectation of representation, at least in terms of 1 person:1 vote, is simplistic.

In the case of LA County’s (LAC) Central Democratic Committee, the LACDP, there are 24 constituent state assembly districts (ADs), the geographic boundary that defines CA state Assembly member’s territory; find yours here. In 22 of these ADs, the LAC registrar conducted contested elections this past Spring. For the two without elections, delegates were appointed to seat vacancies by the Democratic Party (DP) chair for a total of 168 “elected” members of the LACDP (table 1).

Table 1. Distribution of delegates to the LAC Central Committee (LACDP, 8/20) by membership status. Elected delegates to the LACDP constitute one-third the overall membership and comprise ~60% of eligible full-assembly voters.

The precise rules for party membership, participation and voting are complicated, found in LACDP’s bylaws here. The state party, CADEMS, produced an excellent series of explanatory videos here.

But the full denominator of membership may never be fixed as associate members come and go, and chair-appointments are hard to reckon. Currently the CONTINUE READING: How To Assure Representation In A Public-Private Partnership? – redqueeninla